Paperclip Contour, meet Clippy: Kanon Foundry takes a 1973 typeface and makes it flexible across 15 different styles

When Tor Weibull, a type designer who co-founded Kanon Foundry with Alexander Örn in 2019, came across Paperclip Contour on the record sleeve for Kissin’ in the Back Row of the Movies by The Drifters, he was enamoured with its modular expression, but felt that the contour style and absence of uppercase letters made it limited in use. Naturally, as a type designer, he felt moved towards reinventing the idiosyncratic typeface, filling in the letters and developing uppercase letters alongside the lowercase forms. After all, work at Kanon Foundry is rooted in research, historical references and a hands-on approach, so taking a typeface from the 70s and bringing it into 2026 makes total sense for the independent designers.

The result is Clippy, a reinterpretation and elaboration of Ad Werner’s Paperclip Contour, a distinctive typeface originally released by Mecanorma in 1973. Although a filled-in version of the typeface had been created for the logo of Opzij, a Dutch feminist magazine, this version was never commercially released as a typeface. Clippy is optimised for digital use, refined with fewer diagonals, improved curves, optical adjustments and an enhanced, shifting feel, offering a versatile toolkit for expressive typography that has that retro-futuristic vibe. There’s something so unique about this typeface, with p’s that look like those little thingy-ma-jigs that open iPhone sim card slots and a range of symbols that look like alien hieroglyphics.

The variable font technology allows Clippy to move between Retalic, Roman and Italic with fifteen styles that cover a range of weights – it’s quite the range for one system, all tied together with a similar, playful character and the freedom to find out what works best for the intended use. Besides Paperclip Contour, Tor took inspiration from modular lettering such as Herbert Bayer’s work, and as new weights and associations emerged during the creation of Clippy, Tor saw similarities to E13B-like mid-weights and CNC engraving, a manufacturing process that utilises computer-controlled machines to carve and etch lettering into materials.

“The most obvious change was turning the contour style into a filled typeface, but I also added uppercase letters and redesigned the numbers to fit the system,” says Tor. “Early on, I realised the rounded shapes could work well as a variable font, rocking between Retalic and Italic masters. The result reminded me of a roly-poly toy. Later, we produced a few physical roly-poly toys based on the lowercase a.” Some glyphs in the re-designed Paperclip Contour were redesigned to make the ‘rocking’ movement work better, for example: the lowercase j created spacing issues because of its wide hook, so it was replaced with a straight Futura-style tail. In its motion assets, Clippy is clearly designed to rock and roll, back and forth, wiggle and swing – it’s a nod to the revolving, curvy metal of the simple paperclip, its bendy attitude and highly satisfying architecture. There’s no better typeface than Clippy to explore that motion and momentum, for it’s exactly the kind of energetic movement that makes it feel like the perfect update on a typographic classic.